Rep. Steve Cohen: Culture Jammer

Cohen explained to multiple outlets that calling the singer-activist Cyndi Lauper "hot" on Twitter and then deleting the tweet, was part of an elaborate ploy to prank the political media, thereby drawing attention to their taste for scandal.

Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen is no stranger to Twitter-based controversies — in February, he sent a string of affectionate tweets to a 24-year-old woman who turned out to be his daughter, and on Thursday he wrote, then deleted, a tweet calling the singer-activist Cyndi Lauper "hot." But throughout Friday morning and afternoon, at the end of a week cluttered with press criticism, Cohen explained to multiple outlets that calling Lauper "hot," then attempting to hide evidence of doing so, was part of an elaborate ploy to prank the political media, thereby drawing attention to their taste for scandal. First, Cohen told The Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz that the tweet and its subsequent disappearance were "all a ruse. ... I knew by deleting it they would run it, it would give it news, give it life. That was the hook." Minutes after Kurtz's story went up, Luke Russert at NBC reported on Twitter that Cohen intended to "punk" the D.C. press corps as retribution for their interest in the tweets he sent to his daughter.

At the same time, Cohen now seems to fashion himself as a sophisticated media critic. According to Politico's Kate Nocera, the Congressman argued that, had he called the actor-singer Justin Timberlake "hot," the political media would have speculated that he was attracted to men:

Cohen says if he had tweeted that Justin Timberlake was hot we would have written he was gay.